I Sold My Soul On eBay Review: TimeOut Chicago

April 26, 2007 By Guest Contributor 7 Comments

TimeOut Chicago magazine has a review of the book in their upcoming issue! Or at least an article that functions as a review. You can read the article by clicking the thumbnail below or going to the TimeOut Chicago website.

TimeOut

By the way, perhaps you noticed that the article about my book is 3/4 of the page. Who takes up the other 1/4? Could that be Christopher Hitchens? Hell, yes! I’ve made it. His book, God is Not Great, gets 4/6 stars and 1/3 Hemantspace. (Let me bask in my pseudo-glory, just this once.) Not only that, Hitchens’ review begins:

His fatwah envy apparently unsatisfied by the response to his recent Vanity Fair essay explaining why women aren’t funny, erudite bovver boy Christopher Hitchens sets out to piss off the rest of the world with this contribution to the growing canon of neo-atheist tracts.

I love it. Bonus points for any reader who throws the phrase “fatwah envy” into random conversation.

Anyway, here’s the bad and good of the article.

The bad:

  • I made the cardinal mistake of saying the word “like” during the phone interview. Not only did they quote me saying it, they used it as part of the pull-out quotation (in large font). My high school speech team coaches would be so disappointed…

  • Here’s a part of the review:

    As an author, Mehta… inflicts I Sold My Soul on eBay with a sort of mathematical sheen, and his plain prose tends to make his procedural accounts of rote church services a slog to get through, too.

    A slog?! I think I should be upset about this… if only it wasn’t the coolest derogatory comment I’ve ever heard.

The good:

  • The review got better:

    But where he really lights up is in his offbeat observations of absurd, head-scratching rituals like the “Christian mosh pit” at New Life Church in Colorado; the 24-hour prayer hotline that asks him to leave a message; or the Christian business directories that cause him to wonder, Do Christians think non-Christians are not good to do business with?

  • [See comments about Chris Hitchens column space]

I wonder which definition of “slog” was being used…


[tags]atheist, atheism, TimeOut Chicago, Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great, fatwah envy, Vanity Fair, I Sold My Soul on eBay, New Life Church, Christian[/tags]

Filed Under: General 7 Comments
  • http://www.skepchick.org writerdd

    Congrats! You got much more space than Hitchens for his new book! :-)

    By the way, your book is on the new paperbacks table at the front of my local Borders!

  • http://www.conversationattheedge.com/ Helen

    Hemant, congratulations on getting into Timeout Chicago Magazine!

    If I had interviewed you and written that piece I would have been, like, “I’m going to edit that quote a little”.

    ;-)

  • http://emergingpensees.blogspot.com/ Mike C

    Hey Hemant,

    The article said you were going to be teaching out in Naperville. Will you be moving out this way? That’s right down the road from us!

    Or does this have to do with your mysterious “big decision”?

  • http://friendlyatheist.com FriendlyAtheist

    I might move out in that direction, but I’m not sure yet. The “big decision” is something different :)

  • TXatheist

    Hemant,
    If you work along side Dan Darlington he was my football coach in Morris. He moved on to Naperville to be their athletic director. He called me the silver bullet. I was about 140 pounds when I played, smallest guy on the team.

  • TXatheist

    I’m sorry, I forgot he went on be AD at Plainfield(north) not Naperville.

  • http://patrickimo.blogspot.com Patrick Craig

    Hemant, you slogging S.O.B.! :)

    Like, ya know, like, you have this like, “fatwah envy” thing going, and you put one heck of, like, a “mathematical sheen” on it!

    Worry not, my friend – I have found every word in your book to be edge-of-the-seat reading, and I mean that sincerely (btw, can I borrow a hundred bucks? “I will gladly pay you Tuesday!” :) ). I only hope that, if I can ever squeeze out a book myself, that it’s half as good as yours. (Couldja make that two hundred bucks? I’m starting up my own “Chocolate Jesus” franchise!)